Saturday, May 25, 2013

Oakville native
and Indycar racer James Hinchcliffe has been having a pretty good year. Heading
into this weekend’s Indy 500, he’s won two of the four races in the Indycar
season so far, the most recent in Sao Paolo by overtaking Takuma Sato on the
last turn of the last lap before the checkered flag. It’s made him an early
favorite for the series championship – a lead he’d like to maintain when he
races in the Honda Indy double header in Toronto this July, which would make up
for the engine trouble that took him out of last year’s race on the 28th
lap.

Hinchcliffe is
a fan favorite, and not only in Toronto. Quick-witted and articulate, he’s one
of the most media-savvy racecar drivers working today, which has raised his
profile in the sport spectacularly since he took over from Danica Patrick in
the GoDaddy-sponsored car last year. He’s been helped by an altar ego – the
Mayor of Hinchtown – that he created to give race announcers a catchy nickname
for the young driver.

It’s a
brilliant piece of self-marketing, but he wears it lightly, using his website
to both publicize his racing and poke fun at himself. He was in town earlier
this week with fellow Canadian Indycar driver Alex Tagliani to publicize the upcoming
Honda Indy, and I asked him a few questions.

The Mayor of Hinchtown is having a pretty good
year – the mayor of Toronto, not so much. Do you have any advice for Rob Ford,
one mayor to another?

"Build
your own city and make yourself the mayor of that one, so you really can't get
in trouble."

Every Torontonian has a theory about how to fix
the city – we all like to argue about transit and development and roads. Do you
have any ideas about how to make the city work better?

"Stop
building condos downtown and adding people to the whole mess! It always floors
me every time I come home, there's a couple of new buildings going up, and I
don't know where these people are going to go. It's getting bad, but there are
people that get paid a lot of money who have a lot more experience who make
these decisions. I'm glad that's not a problem I have to solve."

There’s a small but vocal minority who’d like to
move the Honda Indy out of the Exhibition grounds to Mosport, maybe even ban it
altogether. Do you have anything to say to those people?

"I think
it's a pretty narrow-minded view because the amount of revenue that it
generates for the city is huge - the economic impact is large. So if we
inconvenience your commute to work for two days, it's pretty selfish to throw
out a whole event that generates a lot of revenue for the city, jobs for
people, opportunities for people, and exposure for a city that does such a good
job of putting on events."

Toronto is one of three stops on the Indy calendar
this season with a double header race – two races, two days in a row. What do
drivers like yourself think about this – will it be racing heaven or hell?

"This will
be hell for various reasons. One is that normally at the end of a race the car
gets completely torn apart, you get a week to put it back together, and the
crew has their shop with all their tools and resources; now those guys are
going to have to do the same preparation, overnight, at the racetrack, with a
fraction of the resources and an even smaller fraction of the time."

"From the
driver's point of view, after a street race especially, Monday morning we're
all exhausted because we get beat up, it's bumpy, you've got blisters on your
hands, you're dehydrated, you're sore from the general physical stress of the
race, you're mentally exhausted - now we're going to have to get up and do it
all again the next day, and that's never been done before, and a lot of us
don't know what to expect, so there's a lot of extra preparation going in,
especially on the physical side, to make sure you're as sharp on Sunday as you
were on Saturday."

You’re heading into the Indy 500 this weekend,
which is probably the most famous auto race in the America, perhaps the world.
What’s the big deal with Indy – why do people who don’t normally race in
Indycar try to get on the starting grid for this race? How is it different for
someone like you, who races Indycar for the rest of the season?

"I think
it only changes for the guy who wins - everything else stays the same. The guy
who wins the race will forever be known as 'Indy 500 winner so and so.' The
thing about it is you can't replicate history. You can't buy history. You can
build the most expensive, fanciest, flashiest racetrack in the world, and yeah
it'll be great, but it's not going to be Indy, because you cannot get that
anywhere else. That is why it's so special to us, that's why everybody wants to
win it, and basically, you win Indy, it's immortality."

What was your first car?

"Mini
Cooper S."

First ticket?

"Ten over.
In Oakville. I was furious. I said 'follow me onto the highway and book me for
doing something awesome - I need a story.' I was seventeen."

What’s your dream car?

"It's a
tie. The Chevy Corvette ZR1 because, bang for the buck, it's just incredible.
And an Audi R8 - I just love the look of that car. I think it's gorgeous - and
four wheel drive is awesome."

What’s your daily driver?

"I drive a
Chevy Tahoe."

What’s your favorite stretch of road in the
world?

"I can
tell you my least favorite stretch of road - that's the 401 between here and
Montreal. Mind-numbing. Just the worst. I don't know about my favorite. There
have been some pretty amazing back roads - my dad's from England, and rural
England has some awesome two-lane roads that are basically rally stages, that
are so much fun to drive."

Favorite racing movie?

"Grand Prix. But I'm hoping that Rush is going to be up there with it -
I'm really excited to see that."